Review: Logitech G13 Gameboard

Pros: Comfortable design keeps everything within easy reach; can program 75 functions to keys per game which is far more than any sane person will ever need; adjustable-color backlighting makes it easy to keep modes straight; LCD screen is great even when you’re not gaming

Cons: Thumbstick doesn’t work better than good old-fashioned WASD; it’s not really all that much more useful than your normal keyboard for non-MMO players

It’s, basically, a programable 23-button keyboard with an integrated wrist rest, LCD screen, and analog thumbstick with three more buttons surrounding it.Â And not only can all 25 buttons and the four directions of the thumbstick be mapped to keys or macros but you can switch between three keymaps on the fly for a borderline ridiculous 75 possible functions at your fingertips.Â Plus, to keep track of which of the three you’re using, a different backlight color can be assigned to each.

On top of all that, probably the coolest feature is the LCD screen.Â When you’re not in a game it can be set to display things like CPU and RAM usage, your email inbox or an RSS feed, though the feature that I got the most non-game use out of is as a display and controls for my MP3 player.Â In-game it can be programmed to display information about that, for example your character stats in WoW.

The problem is that the long list of awesome features don’t really help my game in first-person shooters or strategy games, which are really the only two genres I play on the PC.

I spent time running the G13 through its paces in the two PC games I spend the most time with these days, namely Combat Arms and Civ 4: Colonization, one from each major PC genre.Â In Colonization it was like lighting a candle with a flamethrower; huge, excessive overkill.Â It was somewhat handy to scroll around the map with the thumbstick but the game barely uses my real keyboard except the space bar so that’s 74 keys I never actually press.

It was somewhat more useful for Combat Arms, a micropayment-based multiplayer FPS (which I highly recommend by the way).Â Mapping weapons to the keypad rather than the keyboard made them easier to reach, and setting other keys to bark out orders and other frequently-used phrases made me more likely to communicate with my team and coordinate efforts.Â That said, it actually lowered my score.Â The thumbstick just isn’t as intuitive as the good old-fashioned WASD for moving, so I ended up just mapping four keys in the middle of the keypad to WASD and using that.Â Kinda defeats the purpose.

Of course there’s one genre I didn’t tested: MMOs, the third and most popular PC genre.Â (I would but I don’t currently subscribe to any.)Â It almost seems like most of the features were designed with MMOs in mind and I can see how the device would almost be worth the $80 price tag.Â The vast number of buttons could be programmed to do anything you’d need to do in the game, and the grouping makes it easy to separate them by activity – fighting, crafting and social for example.Â The thumbstick would also become useful since twitch reflexes aren’t as necessary as in a shooter.

In the end, if you’re a hardcore MMO junkie and have $80 for a shiny new gadget, this will probably make your life easier.Â However if you’re like me and play everything but MMOs it’s simply not any better than the keyboard you already have.